Chapter Fifty-Two and a Half: The Fierce Battle

In different places at the same time, two fierce battles took place between master and disciple.

Zha Wenbin invoked Ma Sufeng’s life talisman, gathering the power of the five elements—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. The Five Elements Heavenly Thunder Banner was an innovation of the Tianzheng Sect, using one’s own five-elemental force to summon heavenly thunder. This thunder was many times more powerful than ordinary lightning. The array possessed immense might, trading the practitioner’s own life force and blood for the wrath of heaven—a move that could destroy a thousand enemies while harming oneself almost as much. Such an array was rare across the Daoist schools; in his youth, Ling Zhengyang had secretly learned numerous such forbidden techniques, but by now, only this one remained, passed down to the current generation.

Ye Huan, Ma Sufeng’s senior brother, had once fought over the search for the Star of Calamity, losing an eye in the process. Now, he was even more dangerous, his cultivation having advanced rather than diminished.

“Where is he? It must be him using your talisman—so you’re willing to part with it.” The thunder talisman Zha Wenbin used was forged from Ma Sufeng’s own blood, so how could Ye Huan not recognize it? Ye Huan’s attacks were already fierce; his black Soul-Summoning Banner surged in dark waves. Now that even his Seven-Star Sword had been handed to his disciple, he was left in a difficult position, forced to fight bare-handed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m here to cleanse the sect.”
“Foolish wretch!” The Soul-Summoning Banner lashed out with a snap, met by Ma Sufeng’s peachwood sword. A sharp crack rang out.

Elsewhere, as the thunder struck, the underworld soldiers quaked in terror, unable to imagine that a mortal could summon such devastating heavenly thunder. Even the Lords of the Three Halls of Hell were startled. It was the fifteenth day of the lunar month—the gates of the underworld were wide open. With thunder summoned in this way, countless wronged spirits would be scattered by the blast. The horns sounded and the troops retreated. As the saying goes, when the Dao grows by a foot, the devil grows by ten. Mortal talent is highest among the three realms. The leader’s mourning staff was now broken in two, its darkened tip proof that he had come within inches of “death.”

That damned Daoist was still repeating the same words: “Let her go!” Did he truly not know who this woman was?

The second red banner appeared in Zha Wenbin’s hand. Suddenly, I heard the wailing of war horns; the carriage turned, and the little ghosts carrying the sedan chair threw the woman to the ground and vanished into thin air.

Zha Wenbin shook his bell in front of the woman a few times; in a blink, she disappeared. He waved us over, and only then did the fat man and I dare to run out and join him.

“She’s here,” he said, pointing at his bell. I saw that he had stuffed a wad of something like cotton inside. He continued, “We must set out tonight—lingering brings trouble. If we don’t reach Shanghai within seven days, all will be lost.”

There was no time to bid farewell to Old Man Miao. We left that very night. After all these years, the only road connecting Wildman Hamlet to the outside world was still the primitive mountain path. By the time we reached Shanghai, it was already the fourth day.

When we saw Yuan Xiaobai again, she was already on a ventilator. The Yuan family had begun making funeral preparations. Several groups of experts had come in succession, each shaking their heads before leaving. The day after we left, she had fallen into a deep coma.

On the second floor of the mansion, in the west room, all the curtains were drawn. Two young men stood outside the door: the fat man and I. Not far away, a middle-aged man paced back and forth—Yuan Xiaobai’s father.

Yuan Xiaobai lay peacefully on the bed, her eyes tightly shut. Through her delicate eyelids, Zha Wenbin could see her eyeballs flickering rapidly side to side; her brow was tightly knit in pain. She was dreaming—a nightmare.

Candles ringed the bed, red ones—not to create a romantic mood, but to light her way home. Three sticks of incense smoldered, filling the air with their hazy fragrance. Zha Wenbin sat cross-legged on the floor. In front of him, a bronze bell rested on a cushion, surrounded by a circle of copper coins threaded with red string.

He took a long stick of incense, crossed his hands, and, using his middle fingers, gently circled the incense over the bell, drawing a perfect ring, inside which the incense floated, rising and falling as if on the verge of disappearing.

He bowed deeply to the incense and intoned, “One stick of soul-returning incense, opening the path to the Three Realms; the body is the censer, the heart, the incense; the five offerings are complete, presented to all the true ones above!”

He placed the incense upright in an empty bowl before him. There was no water in the bowl, yet the incense stood firm.

He lit a second stick of incense and chanted, “A second soul-returning incense, piercing straight to the Underworld; ascending the heavens, distinguishing the true from the false; metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, only the lonely soul will awaken.” As he inserted this incense, Yuan Xiaobai’s finger twitched, though Zha Wenbin did not notice, his focus fixed on the bell.

“A third soul-returning incense, connecting to the Ten Halls; three souls and seven spirits, divided by yin and yang; a wisp of blue smoke sends the soul to the Three Pure Ones, the Five Direction Children lead the soul home!” With the third incense in place, Zha Wenbin swiftly sliced his own finger, dripping blood onto the bell until it ran red.

He took the three burning incense sticks and pressed them upside-down onto the bell.

A sharp hiss rang out as the incense flames met the warm blood. Thick blue smoke billowed forth, rising to the height of a man before hovering in place, churning steadily. Slowly, a human shape began to form, until finally a translucent figure floated before Zha Wenbin.

He rose, drew his sword, and slapped a talisman onto the drifting figure, commanding, “Return!”

The sword pointed slowly at Yuan Xiaobai’s body on the bed, and the figure drifted in that direction. Floating above her, Zha Wenbin swung the sword down. The talisman brushed from her face to her feet, and the figure gently sank into her body.

Quickly forming a hand seal, Zha Wenbin pressed his inverted middle finger between Yuan Xiaobai’s brows. A burst of scarlet energy flared as he chanted, “Lotus Lion’s Roar of the Supreme Ultimate, Great Sun Tathagata anchors the three souls!”

He held the position for about a minute. Yuan Xiaobai’s eyelids twitched, then slowly opened. A single clear tear slid from the corner of her eye.

Three days later, in the Yuan family mansion, Yuan Xiaobai, supported by her nurse, sat in the living room eating—that was the first time in two years she had eaten of her own accord.

On the fourth day, we bid farewell to the Yuan family and returned to Northwest Zhejiang, prompted by a telegram reporting that Ma Sufeng, Master Ma, was dying.

At the end, Zha Wenbin and I were both present. It was our second day back. Ma Sufeng had broken five ribs, one piercing his lung and causing internal bleeding. He claimed he had slipped and fallen from the mountain. When some woodcutters found him, he was barely alive. Strangely, they found a Soul-Summoning Banner on his person.

By the sixth day, Ma Sufeng had slightly improved and even managed to bask in the sun. He summoned Zha Wenbin and formally handed him the Tianzheng Sect’s head seal, engraved with “Treasure of the Celestial Master.” That day, I saw Zha Wenbin weep bitterly for the first time.

Perhaps he would never believe his master died from a fall, but what did it matter? Ma Sufeng would never tell him that he had been cast from the cliff by Ye Huan after breaking his own Five Elements Talisman.

In twenty years, for the first time, Ma Sufeng caressed Zha Wenbin’s hair as if he were his own child and said, “That girl’s matter is not yet resolved. After my funeral, you must go once more. How you live the rest of your life depends greatly on her. Your master is old and finished; I can no longer look after you. Bear your burdens well, and in adversity, don’t panic. Taking life is but a bow of the head. Our Tianzheng line hails from Maoshan, but our purpose is salvation. If you cannot save others, at least save yourself.”

Zha Wenbin kowtowed three times, each with a resounding thud. “Your disciple will remember your teachings!”

On the seventh day, the Cha family estate in Hong Village was a flurry of activity. People came and went, bringing funeral wreaths and red cotton blankets—Ma Sufeng had passed away.

Fourteen days later, a large car arrived at the Cha family’s gate from Shanghai. Father and daughter of the Yuan family came together to pay their respects on Ma Sufeng’s soul-calling night. The following day, we set out again for the northeast.

Ma Sufeng had foreseen it all. Yuan Xiaobai was not fully recovered. As Zha Wenbin put it, she was only halfway there, because every night since awakening, she was haunted by nightmares.

In her dreams, a baby girl in swaddling clothes wailed endlessly. No matter what Yuan Xiaobai did, she could not escape the infant. One night, driven by pity, she tried to pick the child up, but as soon as she held her, the infant bared a mouthful of sharp teeth and lunged for her chest.

In agony, Yuan Xiaobai screamed and tried to cast the child away, but no matter how hard she tried, the baby clung fast—its teeth embedded in her flesh.

After much struggle, she finally threw the child down. The baby, with a mouth stained red, grinned wickedly and said that Yuan Xiaobai had stolen her heart and she had come to reclaim it.

The next morning, Yuan Xiaobai recalled the dream, lifted her shirt, and saw a row of marks on her chest—tiny, dense toothprints, with bruising beneath the skin.

Ma Sufeng had said that Zha Wenbin still had two unfinished tasks: First, the infant who was supposed to be reincarnated that night had died prematurely—an unresolved grievance. Second, Yuan Xiaobai was still missing one soul. Its whereabouts were unknown; it was up to us to find it. Otherwise, she would not live more than three years.